Sylvanas has been written as a more gray-area character, whereas Garrosh is being written as a bad guy we need to defeat. We hate him because we're meant to hate him, and Blizzard are doing everything that they can to make it so. Just look at the comments on the frontpage post of the 5.4 cinematic, there were quite a few people who went all bananas and claimed that they finally wanted to bring this Warchief of ours down.

Garrosh and Sylvanas are nothing alike. Garrosh wasn't always a bastard to the Horde, just the Alliance. Sylvanas has always been a terrible general and leader. In her short story she even admits while she was alive all her troops were merely arrows in her quiver. At least Garrosh gave a shit about his people and the Horde as a whole. They had to villify him in MoP because of all the disgruntled Alliance player complaining that Horde were being favored, despite all of classic and BC being Alliance favored, but I digress. Garrosh was an AMAZING character and they tossed him into the garbage can because of Alliance whiners. Amazing.

Edit: Oh yeah, more proof of this character assassination was Blizzard admitted that in the future they would think farther ahead in terms of the story. Amateur hour.

No. Stop touting around this crap that he got killed off because of Alliance whiners. Garrosh went from a whiny-baby douchebag, to a stubborn douchebag, to a raging, stubborn douchebag, to a ethnocentric, xenophobic, raging, stubborn douchebag.

I personally find Garrosh much cooler than Sylvanas, especially after 5.1 and the 5.4 trailer, he's a guy that leads from the front, and beats style, grace and stuff like that to death with an axe. 'Nuff said.

I like Garrosh more aswell, he's the strong warrior, leader of the orcs. Sure he has a few (or alot) kinks here and there, but all in all he's pretty badass. Sylvanas was insanely popular because of warcraft 3 and I personally loved her character because she was the leader of the undead who broke free from the Lich Kings grasp. Even in death she defied the man who defiled her homeland. Now she just turned into Lich King 2.0, she turned into the person she hated the most and doesn't really hold any of the ideals she used to. Worst of all she's on the verge of betraying the horde and killing them and the alliance... :/

Because Garrosh has about as much character depth as an Eastvale logging camp peon. Everything about him is so standard, boring and poorly written. He was badly developed as a villain from day 1.

As for Sylvannas, she seems to be more highly regarded and respected as a true villain. She is cunning, sly and calculative, as well as being evil through and through. Her attitude and villainous characteristics go way back. Most players experienced her turn from High elf and her descent into evil. She is one of the few villains Blizzard have done right.

The Sylvannas/gilneas conflict in silverpine is six-thousand times more interesting and well done than the frankly laughably bad Vol'jin and the world vs Garrosh conflict.

Personally, I like Sylvanas as a character better, because she's much more consistent. She's an amoral person forming alliances of convenience to give her people time to figure out how the fuck they're going to keep going.

Garrosh, on the other hand, spews crap about honor, and sacrifice, and moving beyond the legacy of the original Horde, and then goes and does the same dumb-fuck shit his dad did, without his dad's excuses or his dad's redeeming qualities.

3DS Friend Code: 0146-9205-4817. Could show as either Chris or Chrysia.

I could stand Sylvanas and the Forsaken if the story would stop forcing us to accept the Forsaken having some kind of moral high ground for why they act as they do.
WoW loves to use the low-hanging fruit of racism as a device to justify a lot of bad behavior. The Alliance is racist (ostensibly), therefore the Horde can hide behind victimhood.
The Forsaken suffered discrimination from humans, therefore they can lie, cheat, murder, backstab, and manipulate everyone around them because they were slighted by some humans. It's just too simplistic.
There's little Sylvanas can hide behind except her attractiveness to males and the mild panache in which she executes her plans.

Lets see - Sylvanas is pretty much what you expect from an undead former minion of the lich king. Cold, heartless ect.

Garrosh - replaced Thrall, arguably one of the most loved characters in the franchise, murdered Cairne, another who people liked lore wise, and then outcast Vol'jin. 3 strikes and youre out. PS TROLL POWA MON

And thats all besides the going grom bloodlust betrayal on his own race.

I think the difference is that Garrosh doesn't just want to win and conquer, he wants to rub it in everyones faces as a demonstration of superiority on top of that. Winning would never be enough for him, presumably because he doesn't actually know what he wants.

Sylvannas on the other hand has never really been about that, pre-Wrath she wanted Vengeance against Arthas at any cost; she got it and that was that - it was something she did for herself. Since then she's realised she'll be a long time undead, so she can play a much longer game than any of the faction leaders - again, she sets the agenda to her own ends. In either case, there's just no reason for her to be a dick about what she's doing because her goals and victories are very specific. She knows exactly what she wants and how to get it.

Considering what happened in Western Plaguelands (Sylvanas taking away that DK for "training"), as well as inside Shadowfang Keep (the Forsaken forces ignoring a direct order not to use any plague), it's only a matter of time before she goes mad.

1 Sylvanas' story is alot better than Garrosh's, who was a depressed little boy in Nagrand untill he got recruited to the horde and suddenly becomes an asshole and gains an unjustified huge hatred for the Alliance who he didn't even know existed before.

2 Sylvanas is coherent in her behavior, Garrosh isn't, and I'm not just talking about that questline in Stonetalon mountains but also the fact that Garrosh hates demons so much (that's justified) but yet he's ok with using old gods? How can he think old gods are any better than demons?

3 Garrosh is dumb as hell, anyone who did the Twilight Highlands intro quest on horde can see that.

4 Garrosh's hatred for the Alliance that I mentioned already, it's completly unjustified, I mean sure he isn't sopposed to like the Alliance but why so much hate? They didn't do anything to him atleast untill he came from Nagrand, but he already had that hate in WotLK, maybe it's because of Grom participating in the first and second wars againt the humans? But that doesn't make sense either because it was him and the other orcs that invaded Azeroth in the first place (they didn't have a choice but still, the humans didn't have a choice but to fight back), not the other way around, and it wasn't even the Alliance that killed him.

5 Sylvanas is forsaken/elf, Garrosh is an orc...while I don't hate orcs by any means I don't really care about them either so that doesn't help me like Garrosh, forsaken on the other hand are my second favourite race.

Sylvanas isn't in charge of the entire Horde, so those similarities affect players differently.

It's pretty cool to have a darker faction leader who only really cares for their own race's survival, but it's not so cool when that faction leader is placed in charge of all the races they overtly distain.

I liked both, untill they utterly ruined Garrosh.... they were developing his character throughout cata to become a true leader, tougher, and nastier than Thrall, but stilll a cool warchief, he made stuff interesting...
They just got too lazy deciding to make him a bad guy in the end... after so much buildup.

Considering what happened in Western Plaguelands (Sylvanas taking away that DK for "training"), as well as inside Shadowfang Keep (the Forsaken forces ignoring a direct order not to use any plague), it's only a matter of time before she goes mad.

But it has been a "matter of time" for over 10 years now.
Can we now start to accept that she's walking the line and she will never go evil because that would make her story predictable and boring?

"Training" isn't so bad either, most medieval societies would kill you for what he did.

I think after the SOO is over the horde and alliance will be united again and i think by the discovery of the horde raising the alliance dead back to life will keep the spark between horde and alliance alive. Because lets face it how pissed off would you be if your a king and your war heroes who died for you were brought back to life by your enemy for your enemy.

Garrosh is loud, obnoxious, and has had poor characterization right along. "Are we supposed to pity him? Wait, now we're supposed to like him. Hold on, now he's got a chip on his shoulder, should we hate him? Oh, now he's acting somewhat honorable, should we like him again? Wait, now he's frothing at the mouth and acting brash again. Hey, now he's acting tough, I can kind of get behind this. Oh no, he's back to being crazy again... and racist? WTF? And now he's power-mad..."

Sylvanas has at least been consistent from Vanilla to now. She's far more subtle, has her likable qualities, but also is cold as ice and can turn up the badassery. She broods at times, but we can understand her doing so given her backstory. Her T&A doesn't hurt, either. I think it's a bit of a stretch to make her an outright villain, but I like that they gave her a motive and a reason to carry it out -- she wants to see her people, and her empire, continue to exist, and Forsaken cannot reproduce, so it's Scourgin' time.

I suppose because Sylvanas has a backstory, a believable motive and objective. She might be evil in the eyes of most but if you look at what happened to her and her people, you could almost forgive her for being so. Not to mention she is far more cunning and her plots are at least interesting.

Garrosh on the other hand is evil for the sake of being evil. My biggest problem is there is practically no motive or explanation how he want from "Arrogant but generally loyal to the tenants of the Horde" to "cartoon-level super villain". He is evil purely for the sake of being evil it would seem and that is just bad writing. There is no motive or real explanation how he wound up in the state of mind he is now. His hatred of the Alliance is generally unexplained and his bizarre loathing of most of the Horde is even more of a mystery as until he started abusing his power, he had no real reason to have issue with any of the non-orc races.